In Howard Schultz's biography about Starbucks, he mentions the same phenomena. After Starbucks started getting big, activists would start attacking the company

In Howard Schultz's biography about Starbucks, he mentions the same phenomena. After Starbucks started getting big, activists would start attacking the company for some flaw which Starbucks knew they were the least bad in the industry in and he would get quite frustrated. It was only after talking to activists that he realized they were also well aware that everyone else in the coffee industry was even worse than Starbucks but because they weren't as famous, activists would intentionally target the #1 player because that's the way to play the news cycle.